David Kilgour
The Far Now
Merge Records, 2007
Erstwhile leader of Dunedin New Zealand’s The Clean, David Kilgour has created a long and interesting career flying the indie-rock flag south of the equator. Like kindred spirit Bob Pollard, Kilgour has made a series of quirky and interesting albums, both in his long career with The Clean, and solo: perfect pop melodies often couched in decidedly lo-fi casings.
Like fellow Kiwi Roy Montgomery, Kilgour has always been interested in the possibilities of the guitar, and has long imbued his recordings with layers and textures of sometimes startlingly beautiful sounds. His records have an organic quality that is refreshingly out of step in this age of aggressive, plastic music. The far-out sounds are created on traditional instruments, mostly guitars, which give his music a pleasingly grounded flair; flight balanced with gravity. This uniqueness may or may not be related to the fact that he hails from Dunedin, an isolated little city in the south of New Zealand, the most isolated country in the world.
His career high 2002 album, A Feather in The Engine is a case in point: recorded almost entirely by Kilgour himself, it bears the stamp of a man with a singular musical vision. Kilgour’s stock in trade has always been simple melodies, simple truths, recorded with a truly unique palette of sounds and shapes.
For some reason The Far Now falls a little short of Kilgour’s usually stellar qualities of both the perfect 2:59 pop and the extended sound explorations evident on A Feather in The Engine. It’s as if, upon returning from his North American tour with Merge label-mates Lambchop in 2003, he decided to forego his eccentricities and concentrate on music with more “mass appeal”. The problem with this is that David Kilgour could never be populist because of his unique musical qualities that are conveyed by whatever purveyors of indie-rock are the flavour of the moment, but never by the man himself.
It’s kind of like what Brian Eno said of the Velvet Underground: “Only five thousand people ever bought a Velvet Underground album, but every single one of them started a band.” A great notion, perhaps, but it must get a little wearisome for a man who’s trying to forge a career with the same five thousand people purchasing his records.
So instead of simple truths and simple melodies as containers for interesting ideas and textures, Kilgour has opted to largely leave them unadorned and naked. However, this lack of polishing doesn’t really bring clarity and focus: it simply makes the songs feel unfinished and only of demo quality. The low vocal levels don’t help either: the listener has to strain to hear the words, as if Kilgour is slightly embarrassed by them, and was perhaps planning some rewrites.
Still, it must be said that there are some excellent moments here. Yenisei, an ode to getting drunk on Japanese liquor, has an extended instrumental coda that recalls his finest moments on A Feather in The Engine. Overall, however, one can’t help but wish that The Far Now was a little nearer to then.
Review by Greg Hood-Morris
Agree? Disagree? Email Greg at criticizegreg@gmail.com
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